QuoteReviews for these games have been late, but they're coming in now. I'll update this as more reviews gradually come out.
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric reviews (Wii U)
I was initially excited when Sega first announced that Big Red Button would be developing Sonic Boom. I thought Sega handing the iconic license over to a new developer might shake Sonic loose of the slump he's endured via a string of rough Sonic Team titles. Unfortunately for fans and the Hedgehog himself, Sonic Boom is a blemished bore.
Generic and unpolished, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric falls well below our already-low expectations.
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is a failure at some basic levels of gaming. While it's understandable that a franchise may want to move beyond the simple elegance of its origins, a muddled web of poorly connected and even more poorly executed systems is not the answer.
The undercooked Rise of Lyric does away with just about everything that makes a great Sonic game, favoring tedious, uninspired combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving over exhilarating bursts of speed coupled with well-designed platforming passages.
It's admirable that Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric tries so many new things, but every path it follows is a dead end.
Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal reviews (3DS)
With a heaping helping of poorly written and unskippable cutscenes, Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal is a slog that never finds its footing.
The sorry "story" segments largely amount to random combinations of the four main characters trading bad jokes, such as running the difference between "who" and "whom" into the ground.